Author
Topic: Blow-off Blues (Read 650 times)

I knew something was wrong when I got home from a trip and saw that the blow-off bucket was empty. I had decided to cool the wort while I was gone, before I siphoned it to a keg. Unfortunately, I forgot one of the 1st laws of thermodynamics........ things contract when cooled. When I pulled the carboy out of the fermenter and was ready to siphon, I noticed a clear layer on top of the Alt. After letting out a cacophony of four letter expletives, it all made sense. The drop in temperature in the carboy sucked all of the starsan and blow-off goop back into the beer.

My beautiful DDorf Alt that I thought was as tasty as anything I had made had been violated!

I very slowly siphoned the bottom layer of beer out from under the clear top layer. It appeared that it did not get significantly disturbed. No obvious off flavors. Maybe a bit watery. The FG is now 1010 - it was 1012 before I left. It is now getting force carbonated. I guess we will see what happens.

Moral of the story - I should be reading more of the forum and its wealth of info, and learn from the experiences of others (I would lay money that this topic has been discussed before), and not just the things that catch my attention.

I knew something was wrong when I got home from a trip and saw that the blow-off bucket was empty. I had decided to cool the wort while I was gone, before I siphoned it to a keg. Unfortunately, I forgot one of the 1st laws of thermodynamics........ things contract when cooled. When I pulled the carboy out of the fermenter and was ready to siphon, I noticed a clear layer on top of the Alt. After letting out a cacophony of four letter expletives, it all made sense. The drop in temperature in the carboy sucked all of the starsan and blow-off goop back into the beer.

My beautiful DDorf Alt that I thought was as tasty as anything I had made had been violated!

I very slowly siphoned the bottom layer of beer out from under the clear top layer. It appeared that it did not get significantly disturbed. No obvious off flavors. Maybe a bit watery. The FG is now 1010 - it was 1012 before I left. It is now getting force carbonated. I guess we will see what happens.

Moral of the story - I should be reading more of the forum and its wealth of info, and learn from the experiences of others (I would lay money that this topic has been discussed before), and not just the things that catch my attention.

And get rid of the blow-off tube before I chill.

Mac

Been there done that. It will NEVER happen to me again. Probably a quart of that nice stuff ended up back in the fermenter.....

Haven't done that with the blowoff, but I did do a double take followed by a long cro-mag stare when I noticed the airlock activity of a 6-month old 1.002 FG sour beer carboy had restarted, burping away once every few seconds.

Finally realized it was going in reverse; most of the liquid had been pulled into the carboy and it was bubbling air into the carboy through the 3-piece airlock.